John Pym

John Pym (1584-8 December 1643) was MP for Calne from 1621 to 1624 and MP for Tavistock from 1624 to 1629, and from 1640 to 1643. He was the leader of the Long Parliament and one of the five MPs who King Charles I of England sought to arrest in 1642, leading to the English Civil War.

Biography
John Pym was born in Brymore, Somerset, England in 1584 to a family of minor nobles, and he became a lawyer in 1602. In 1614, he married the aunt of the scientist Robert Hooke and became a devout Puritan and anti-Catholic. He became MP for the Wiltshire town of Calne in 1614, and, in 1624, he changed his seat to Tavistock, Devon and represented the seat for the rest of his career. He became a leader of Puritan and Parliamentarian opposition to King Charles I of England, and he was notable in defending the powers of the Parliament. On 5 January 1642, King Charles sent troops to arrest Pym and four other radical Puritan MPs, but they had already fled, forcing King Charles to raise his battle standard and declare war on Parliament. Pym died a year later of cancer.